Throw It Deep
by aggressivekinetic
Summary: Vic digs into a box of trophies and rediscovers what he thought he lost. Gar tags along because he thinks he's funny. (Set during The New Teen Titans and is explicitly '80s)


He didn't watch a game for at least a year after the accident. The Superbowl happened when he was being put back together; whatever pieces his dad could salvage of him being integrated into a metal and electrical framework that anyone who had less than a doctorate in – at the very least – one field of engineering could barely understand at the time he was put out into the world. Who won that year? His dad couldn't tell him, he'd never cared for sports.

Vic was a freak that no one wanted to acknowledge. He was dead to Marcy for a while and Ron tried to use him for his own motivations; he had no friends left that could even tell him who won since he couldn't bring himself to watch anything that had to do with the sport. Commentary? Turn it off. Speculation on so-and-so's career? Smash the radio. If he couldn't play college ball, if he couldn't go pro, he didn't want to hear it. Didn't want to see it. Never wanted to feel the laces of a ball under his fingers again if he couldn't throw it deep.

He couldn't even hear a Jets game without that gut-deep urge to smash something.

Then one day, he felt the urge to dig through his parents' things. Find the box of his trophies and medals, all the things he took for granted when he was fully organic. They hung on his wall before, glinting in the slanting sunlight from his window, boasting his achievements to his disapproving father and his quietly approving mother. Then after the accident, they got boxed away. His dad couldn't look at them anymore. He probably knew Vic couldn't either. Until the day he went looking for them and found then neatly packed away, wrapped in newspaper and bubblewrap in boxes sitting on the rafters in their old house.

It was the first step back into what he loved. Sure, he was good at engineering. Good at inventing and taking his father's inventions further than Silas Stone could've ever imagined but he never loved it as much as he loved the physicality of running and throwing. The challenge that he had to work for instead of the non-challenge of academics.

He missed it. The fire in his gut that had come to life after he woke up had finally been extinguished; with his dad's death had come a sense of calm and rest that he hadn't known since he was a child. He regretted going to his old high school. Scaring the coach with what his new body could do. But it was done. There was no going back there now.

The silver of his hand flashed against the gold of an exposed trophy as he reached into the box to pull it out.

Most Valuable Player – Victor Stone. 1981.

His mom had been proud of that one. His dad's silent disapproval hadn't mattered to him when she put it on the mantel between their family pictures.

He pulled out another one. A little league first place trophy from 1975. He set it aside and reached into the box to pull out a medal that had been tucked away inside of a box that looked like Silas had bought for it especially. It certainly hadn't been that way the day he went to see his parents. He let the light catch the shine of the medal, glinting off of the letters of his name and place. It was first. It came after months of work and striving and competing against himself to get his best time. He set it down and sat back, staring into the box as a knock came from the doorway.

"Hey, Chrome Dome."

Vic rolled his eye and turned, his line of vision meeting with a short, green teenager.

"Did the leader man send you to check on me, Greenie?" He propped his elbow on his knee and stared at the Gar as the boy shrugged and weighed all the options in his mind, making his hands into a make-shift scale.

He gave one last shrug. "Yeah but I wanted to see how you were doing, anyway."

Vic's shoulders rolled, a half-shrug spurring him into movement as he dug into the box again to take out one of the smaller trophies. Another little league trophy, this time from the first year he'd been allowed to play sports; his mom thought that homeschooling him might stunt his social growth. Spending all that time around adults and not enough time around kids his own age.

He snorted. Hanging around Gar made up for a lost childhood.

"What's so funny?" Gar dropped to the floor next to him, never one to be left out of a joke.

"I was just thinking – don't worry about being left out."

"Whatever." Gar turned his attention to the scattered awards on Vic's bedroom carpet. "How many of these things do you have? This is like its own museum – 'the land of Vic Stone's lost history. Discover what the stone age was like.'"

Vic pulled out another trophy. "Funny. What are you doing here, again?"

"Wanted to make sure you were okay." It'd been a week since the funeral, is what he meant. A week for Vic to settle into knowing Silas was dead, a week for him to come to terms with dealing with the will and his dad's plans for all of his possessions. But he wasn't going through his old trophies because of the will, he needed to find what he'd lost along the way.

Vic dug around in the bottom of the box as Gar watched, his elbows propped up on his knees. His metal fingers were still a little clumsy as they dug through the trophy box, some of his joints catching the wrappings. He'd have to fix that, make them more stream lined as he worked on future designs for his limbs.

He pulled out another trophy and shook the wrappings off of it.

"Ah, this is what I was looking for." Vic grinned, his teeth catching the light from the window and illuminating his face.

Gar's eyebrows rose and he looked over, his eyes running over the words engraved on the trophy.

"What's it from?"

"It's from my senior year," he paused and wiped the name plate with his sleeve. "We went to the state playoffs." He could smell the misty fog that had started to roll in around the third quarter. Feel the cold against his cheeks. His grin grew softer, dimpling his cheek. "We lost. Fucked up in the fourth quarter and no matter how hard we tried, we couldn't come back from it. The score ended up being fifty-two to fifty and man, my coach was pissed at how close it was."

He sat back and set the trophy down to look at it. Gar was looking at him instead, his eyebrows drawn together in confusion.

"And you got a trophy because?"

"I got a trophy because I kept the team together." He shrugged. "It was my responsibility as the quarterback and team captain, you know. I had to try and keep up morale and my team liked it so much that they made up an award to tell me how much it mattered."

"Sounds like a good memory." They were both staring at the figure on top of the trophy. Gold colored plastic in the shape of a man, an arm pulled back, fingers fitted over the laces of a football.

Vic rested his elbows on his knees again. "Yeah, I had some of the best times of my life on the field."


End file.
